I wasn’t expecting SHAREfactory. Making it possible to copy captured videos to USB, sure. Uploading directly to YouTube and maybe other sites, which still hasn’t happened yet, definitely. But I didn’t expect Sony to put so much effort into making a video editing tool like SHAREfactory for the PS4. I’ve made a few videos with it now: Continue reading SHAREfactory Wish List

The new Microsoft console, Xbox One, has just been revealed, with more details to come at E3. These are my initial thoughts. I’ve already written up and retweeted a bunch of immediate reactions on Twitter:

Suppose you want to be president of the United States. How would you get there? Well, assuming you were born into a wealthy family, you might start with law school and local politics. Make sure to practice public speaking and cultivate as much personal charisma as you can muster. Campaigns are expensive, and you wouldn’t want to squander all of your family’s wealth on them, so seek sponsors. After all, you understand that a personal investment of wealth in your own campaigns is a gamble, but for sponsors it’s an investment. Use the money donated by wealthy corporate and individual sponsors to advertise. To attain these donations, of course, you must support the interests of donors when in office. Those are the interests important to you for keeping your office; the lower classes can be influenced well enough by advertising and speeches, and you don’t even have to bother trying to earn the votes of partisans at all, as long as you purport to be a member of their party.

There’s a new editorial up today on Kotaku describing a man’s struggle with the disconnect between reality and the elaborate systems of extrinsic rewards we have used as the basis of so many things in our society. As Kotaku is a gaming news website, the role of video games in this process is of course mentioned.